Epic: Next Gen Dev Costs To Double

The makers of the popular Unreal Engine and Gears of War say the development costs of next-generation titles will likely double.

Speaking today at the Montreal International Game Summit, Epic Games chief technology officer Tim Sweeney said the costs could be way worse, noting the three minute Samaritan demo from GDC 2011 took four months and 30 people to complete.

“If we extrapolate that into creating an entire game, we were worried that the cost would go up by a factor of three or four or even five in the next generation," he said, as reported by Gamesindustry International “And of course, we felt that was not acceptable.”

Epic helped offset the costs by improving its production pipeline.

Ubisoft said recently its next generation costs likely won't increase at least for the first two years due to the publisher's cross-generation development. "We don’t know about the third year where we will take advantage of the full capacity of those consoles. We will probably have to spend more money at that time," CEO Yves Guillemot said earlier this month.